From Organisational Capacity to Community Resilience: Social Enterprises and Non-Profits in Urban Johannesburg

Abstract

Social enterprises and non-profit organisations are seen as beneficial for sustainable urban development in African mega-cities. How exactly they contribute to the communities they operate in by providing social services or by promoting participation and integration, is, however, not fully understood. Aiming for a better understanding, we conducted qualitative case studies of four different social enterprises/non-profit organisations active in Soweto, Johannesburg. Each case study comprises interviews with different stakeholders and internal and/or published documents. Analysis and interpretation were inspired by Grounded Theory methodology and undertaken first on case, then on a cross-case level. Our findings show the importance of organizational resilience as a precondition and enabler for community resilience. We highlight six themes of relevance for both organisational and community resilience, that shed light on the kind of contribution social enterprises and non-profit organisations can make to local community development. This study demonstrates its originality by addressing a gap in scholarly understanding of how social enterprises organizational resilience act as a precursor and enabler of community resilience thereby opening unexplored research avenues within the emerging domain of social entrepreneurship for resilience.